Plowden (1967)

Volume 1 The Report

556 pages containing the Report's 32 chapters, notes of reservation, three annexes, glossary and index, complete with all the diagrams, graphs, tables and footnotes.

Volume 2 Research and Surveys

633 pages containing the Report's 14 appendices including the 1964 National Survey of parental attitudes and circumstances related to school and pupil characteristics.

Articles about Plowden

Ten articles written in 1987 on the 20th anniversary of the publication of the Report. In addition to my own contribution, there are pieces by AH Halsey and Kathy Sylva, Maurice Kogan, George Smith, David Winkley, Neville Bennett, Maurice Galton, Philip Gammage, Andrew M Wilkinson and Bridget Plowden herself. There are also links to some Plowden-related pages on other websites.

A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1967
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Notes on the text

The Plowden Report was published in two volumes.

Volume 1: Report (556 pages) contains the report itself, consisting of 32 chapters, notes of reservation, three annexes, a glossary and an index.

Volume 2: Research and Surveys (633 pages) contains the research and surveys which underpinned the report.

The full text of both volumes is online, including the diagrams, graphs, tables and footnotes which appeared in the original.

Revised version of the text: January 2010

The text of both Volumes has been revised to include page numbers.

Footnotes are now displayed where they were in the original - at the foot of each page.

In Appendix 11 of Volume 2 the table numbers are now shown as in the original.

I've also amended the formatting of the text (bold, italics, centred etc) so that it is now a reasonably accurate representation of the printed text. However, please note that the pages presented here are not exact facsimiles of the original printed version: the font (Times, Arial etc) and size of print - and therefore the number of words to a line and lines to a page - are determined by the settings you have chosen for your web browser.

Anything added by way of explanation is shown [in square brackets].

If you have any comments - positive or negative - on this new version of the text, or if you spot any errors, I'd be grateful if you'd email me.

Tables

The two volumes of Plowden contain more than 400 tables, 60 or so diagrams and 46 photographs.

In this web version, some tables and diagrams are embedded in the text. Others, especially the larger ones, are shown as links in the text - clicking on one opens a pop-up window displaying the relevant table or diagram. (The Tables and Diagrams can also be accessed from the Contents list in the Preliminary pages).

Where a table or diagram is larger than the pop-up window, your web browser should display scroll bars. If it does not, either enlarge the window using the handle at the bottom right of its frame, or grab part of the table with your mouse and drag downwards to see the rest of the table.

If you normally have your browser set to display a large font size, you may find that some tables look better if you reduce the font size.

I have presented most of the tables in grids - I think this makes them easier to read on a screen.

Photographs

The photographic plates in Volume 1 can only be accessed from the Contents list in the Preliminary pages.